I did intend to get a bath and a scrub-down recently when I went through my local car wash. In fact, I hadn’t even planned to go through one at all, but after a series of pounding thunderstorms around here, and seeing no one waiting in line as I drove past, I pulled in and rounded the corner, paid my fee, put ‘er in NEUTRAL PLEASE! and headed in sixteen bucks the poorer. What happened next can be described as typical of the kinds of accidents I am prone to, this one ranking particularly high on the stupid scale.
As I pulled forward, I decided at the last second to apply my brakes, roll down my window, and ask the attendant to give my bumper extra attention, whereupon I received a full-on plastering by his water cannon. I don’t know who was more shocked, myself or the guy with the hose, but the stream hit me right between the eyes, a perfect shot, and for the split second I was being hammered in the face, the sudsy water also covered the inside of my front seat and dashboard.
After the initial shock and a mouthful of soap, one might assume I would be glad for this bathing – that I got triple for my money – a car wash, teeth flossing, and the exfoliation of the first layer of my facial skin. People pay good money for that kind of thing, like at nail salons, but mostly what I felt was that I had never done anything quite so stupid in all my life. Extra soap notwithstanding, the water blast was one hundred percent my fault of course – the silver lining being that my sunglasses have never been quite so clean. Running a close on the stupid scale was another time when I made a decision to make a last-minute dash out of an airplane taxiing down a runway – not a federal offense – but an impetuous decision, nonetheless.
Anyway, my hosing at the car wash did awaken me to an observation I’ve made over the years, one that has been poking at my conscience and general sense of mercy for those who seem helpless to handle the world at large.
If you occasionally run your car through a car wash, you probably have seen a multitude of stuff animals and puppets along the way, and you probably did not think much about it because, after all, you paid to get your car washed, not to go to a petting zoo or a Build-a Bear Factory. Lately, I’ve taken special notice of these animals, which are mostly Muppets by the way, and to the aggravation of the drivers behind me, I slow down to take a closer look and snap a few pictures of the ones that looked particularly miserable, which, really, is all of them. Sad to say, this last winter has been particularly hard on all things exposed to the elements with significant accumulations of ice and snow piled on the group of weather-beaten critters at car washes, most of whom look rigid and frozen stiff.
By the way, I refer to these animals not as stuff animals but as puppets because there is a sense that they may begin talking to you at any moment, evidenced by the fact that they are balanced precariously on a makeshift hand and that they pop up around every corner, kind of like, well, puppets do.
All that being said, there are number of pieces worth examining here, observations that point to significant psychological ramifications, and the breaking of cultural norms that paint a dark picture regarding the care and supervision of our local puppet population.
I took the time to find the owner after my water-bathing-slash-trouncing to ask him why puppets are displayed at his car wash and was told that they give small kids some relief from the trip through – distracting them from robotic arm sprays, explosions and flashing signs warning of impending water vortexes and upper atmospheric changes that reflect the emission of toxic gases, not to mention the heaps of dirt and grime dumped on your car by the truck in front of you, and so forth. Yet, after his explanation I was left with the feeling that the manager had some sort of off-the-spectrum detachment evidenced by his hollow eyes, puffiness, and the fact that he kept repeating the same three phrases as if being controlled by a pull-cord coming out of his back.
In addition, I could only see half of the owner himself as the lower half was hidden behind a counter. Walking away, I had the sneaking suspicion that he had probably been raised by circus parents who ran one of those shooting galleries with a pop gun and a spinning target that awarded stuffed animals to winners as prizes, animals like pink giraffes and life-size teddy bears. In other words, I had a hard time buying his explanation.
In fact, my observation of the Elmos and Kermits I always see as my car moves along is that these mismanaged fluffy toys could not possibly provide relief to children trapped in their car seats and watch the puppets being hit in the face by hurricane force winds from mammoth fans built by Lockheed-Martin Aeronautics. It seems obvious that if you were a manager of a car wash wanting kids to have a good experience going through, you would not collect a bunch of stuff animals fresh out of a child’s bedroom, position them in a row of highchairs and allow their furry and fuzziness to be drenched and beaten to high heavens by water cannons. I believe those tactics are known as Riot Control, not entertainment and result in puppets that look faded and pale and slumped over as if their blood sugars have bottomed out. Certainly, we are not to believe that God’s puppet creatures are part of the “Ultimate Deal” we are offered, which includes a clear coat, tire shine and wheel bright for an additional nine dollars.
Secondly, while one can make the case for keeping these animals clean, and while I can see some benefits to covering a car wash puppet with layers of clear coat or car wax, I am under the impression that animals generally clean themselves with only a few volunteering for a commercial cleaning of any kind. I know, I know… there was a case a few years ago of a buffalo that wandered through a do-it-yourself car wash in Butte, Montana, but you must admit, such cases are rare, and in this case the buffalo had a history of mental health issues like repeatedly wandering away from the herd, and inciting stampedes through busy intersections.
I have my own personal history with puppets, my first being a tiger puppet my grandchildren affectionately call Tigger, as from the famed Winnie the Pooh stories. My grandmother gave him to me when I was three or four, and he is still furry with a strong voice, able to perform behind a counter or couch pretty much at a moment’s notice. We like Tigger around our house. He has been treated well for over sixty years, except for one incident where he fell into the bathtub when I was four, but he was quickly extracted and dried off with a fluffy towel, good as new, returning to perform at a very high level within minutes. This, I believe is the normal life of a puppet, one sprinkled with affection and lots of affirmations, and makes our Tigger the first toy pulled off the shelf when the grandkids come over to play. He is like a furry version of Mr. Rogers around here, without the slippers and the song about being my neighbor.
Imagine for a second you are a puppet and have been hit all day long with winds of up to fifty miles an hour and succumbed to the equivalent of several hundred thunderstorms of washes, again, part of the advertised Ultimate Deal. You have kept a smile on your face for the kids who are making dumb faces at you as they slide by listening to Blippy on high, and now its quitting time and the car wash goes silent. You are a puppet and you are alone and exhausted and just hoping none of the other puppets are staring at you take a break for a nap and nod off. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Doppler radar has picked up tornadic activity and the National Weather Service ramps up their siren to a couple of hundred decibels. Reacting as puppets do, I would come straight up off my chair, experience some kind of puppet cardiac event, and then keel over dead until morning, when I would awaken to a new day with a blast of water from something like a howitzer. What a nightmare for a puppet! That’s not entertainment! C’mon!
I’ve done a bit of research, interviewing some twenty-three kids between the ages of three and eight, and have found only one child who described a sense of comfort by seeing a stuffed animal at a car wash. In all fairness the small child was only two, with a vocabulary of a meager nine words. Several other children I spoke to said that some of the puppets they saw were missing limbs and/or a head, and one sobbing child told he that she had recovered a small pink leg in the vacuum area, a report that is still under investigation with Puppets Protective Services. (Side note: the child is under investigation also, but that is another podcast).
All in all, I have to tell you quite honestly, that even though my car may look shiny and new after a good car wash, there some lingering puppet residue here that has left me feeling kind of sad and tossed aside, even feeling kind of incomplete, and these thoughts led me to run my car back through a second time to rid myself of the smell of guilt. I feel in some way that I have turned a blind eye to the line of little car wash animals longing to sit quietly on a couch, snuggling next to a toddler, perhaps drink tea at a tiny table with tiny silverware, perhaps be squeezed like a pillow now and then. I grieve these animals deeply.
Yet, I have had other thoughts of dressing in camouflage and conducting a clandestine operation in the dead of night, sort of mono-SWAT Puppet team if you will. Here I would sneak around to the local car washes and cut those puppets loose, including all the Kermits, who would scurry off puppet-style to freedom. This could be the start of something like a Disney Catch and Release program, only there wouldn’t be any fireworks or Epcot pamphlets being handed out. The beauty of my operation is that the released animals could live out their days in relative fluffy and stuffiness and never have to submit to another wax-on and wax-offing as long as they lived. It would make me feel a lot better, a lot better, knowing I had done my small part for those puppets who are unable to do it for themselves, an empowering notion if you stop to think about it. I might even submit it to DOGE for consideration. Just saying, it’s got possibilities.
I think these thoughts may be the very line of thinking I was engaged in that day when I spontaneously rolled my window down and was sprayed in the face by the attendant with a water cannon. I was grateful that it took almost the entire car wash before I could focus again, a trip where I was unable to see any puppets as the spray cannon had blown my contact lenses out of my eyes and burnt my upper eyelids.
However, as I came near the end of the tunnel with a clean car, I was able to make out a very pale, yellow Big Bird with one eye. He was bravely trying to wink and wave goodbye at me as I left, but he had a thunderstorm brewing next in line, and he couldn’t possibly take his eye off that Ultimate Deal.